SURROGATES: Reflections on the birth of my son via a surrogate in India

Crystal Travis (right) is a surrogacy advisor. All three of her children were born via a surrogate in India. Submitted photo

CRYSTAL TRAVISVANCOUVERDESI.COM
Our son Mark turned 4 on Oct. 15th, and so many memories flashed through my subconscious all day.
I’m sure his surrogate Nayana was thinking about his birth, as she
currently is working in Israel in order to send money back home to
India. As most of us know, women from Third World countries often travel
to other countries to seek out a living for their family back home.
I went back through the journal my husband and I started before Mark
was born, to see just what we were thinking leading up to his birth. A
middle aged couple, me, African American, and my husband, Caucasian and
born in Melbourne, Australia – who would have thought that children of
the ’60s would have ever connected.
Well, we did and, as life moved on, my eggs aged out. By the time we
decided to have a family, and start down the road of IVF, we already
needed an egg donor. Then we realized that we needed a surrogate, too,
so off to India we went. My husband Colin often said he thought of this
as a lottery ticket. Who would have ever thought that we would win?
In 2008, there was not much talk about surrogacy in India, and it
certainly was not a 2.3 billion dollar business like it is today.
Our journey led us to Gujarat, India, to a little village called
Anand. This area of India is known as a cottage industry for surrogacy.
We were mesmerized by the kindness of people as well as the
all-encompassing poverty around us.
Uday, who is a fixture in Anand, dropped us off at a hotel called The
Laksh, We hated the food, and the stench of the hotel made us nauseous.
However, we love Indian food, and to this day still eat hit it 1-2
times a week. We both ended up eating tangerines for days, from a cart
off of the street, which is the worst thing you can do, besides drinking
the water, in a Third World country, and lost weight.
The days seemed to lag as if we were behind in time by hundreds of
years. The juxtaposition about so many things happening around us almost
seemed like too many things to take in, on one’s first trip to India.
The constant sound of beeping and auto rickshaws crawling around the
town like ants was a sight to behold.
The colours of the saris that waved through the air, as women rode
3-4 on motorcycles, was like a slow motion dance and we sat for hours as
if in a trance watching everything whiz by.
The next morning, a man who we would consider a valet in the U.S,
hailed down an auto rickshaw for us to ride in. This strapping man was a
force to be reckoned with, as his long sword hung from its holster on
his pants. We noticed that he kept sending away rickshaw after rickshaw.
Finally we asked why and he replied they want more than the 20 rupees
it costs for the ride despite it only costing no more than 10 rupees.
Ten rupees is equivalent to 20 cents in U.S. currency. Who would
argue with someone with a sword? Eventually we rode through the crazy
streets in Anand, where cows, dogs, motorcycles, bikes, cars, trucks,
and, yes, even a woman nursing her baby were all on the same street.
We met with Dr. Patel, and her husband, Dr. Hitesh Patel, and thought what an interesting pair.
Colin did his sperm deposit in what used to be an objectionable
bathroom but he was able to get the job done. We discussed finances and
hung around to meet our surrogate.
Finally to our excitement our surrogate came, with her family. An
exchange of questions were answered, and the customary photos that most
intended parents wish to take were shot. However I had a gut feeling
that this would not work.
I noticed many other couples who were at the clinic, and they had the
look of deer caught in the headlights. This was something that Colin
and I did not have and it served us well.
After returning home we received news in late January that our
surrogate did not receive a positive. I told Dr. Patel to find another
surrogate immediately because emotionally I knew I had to get back on
the horse right away, or I would dwell in my own sorrow and possibly
give up. Almost immediately Dr. Patel found us a surrogate who was a
nurse. As fate would have it, she ended up being the surrogate for all
three of our beautiful children.
We received sonograms, as well as videos of our son, over the months
of the pregnancy and all went well. As soon as we arrived in Anand on
Oct. 15, 2008, Mark was born. The story of his birth is for another
post, but one that, looking back on now, was a series of comedies that
were not comical at the time. Nevertheless, we are ecstatic and blessed
to have our son.Crystal Travis’ website, WorldofSurrogacy.com,
provides basic information about the process and expenses of surrogacy.
She and her husband, Colin, live in the D.C. area with their son Mark,
born in 2008, and twins Alec and Elle born in 2010. The children were
born of the same surrogate mother in a clinic in Anand, Gujarat, India.

Wednesday, October 17, 2012

Surge In Surrogacy And Hollywood Is Taking Notice

October 16th, 2012 CEO

There
is a surge of births through surrogacy and Hollywood is taking notice.
E! News host Guiliana Rancic has a son by a surrogate mother, born late
last month. Sarah Jessica Parker and Matthew Broderick also have
children born of a surrogate, as do Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban.
Crystal Travis has experienced the anguish of infertility herself,
and selected surrogacy as a solution. “Every family has the right to
realize their dreams of parenthood in an affordable and low stress way,”
Travis says. She and her husband have a son born in India, and twins
born two years later of the same surrogate mother. Because of their
experience, Crystal Travis started a consulting service for intended
parents.
Surrogacy costs about the same as adoption, but has an important
benefit: the resulting baby has a genetic connection with one or both
parents. Choosing a surrogate mother in India is a fraction of the cost
of surrogacy in the United States. But it can be difficult for
prospective parents navigating their way through the paperwork and
ensuring their baby gets good prenatal care. Travis has helped dozens of
people become parents through surrogacy in India, overseeing the
pregnancy, birth and homecoming every step of the way. More than 25,000
babies are born through surrogate mothers in that country annually.
Travis launched her consulting business after the birth of her twins.
“Surrogacy is a 2.3 billion dollar industry in India,” she says. She
frequently travels to India to meet with attorneys and have personal
contact with the doctors providing prenatal care and delivery. A support
staff in India makes frequent calls to check on the progress of each
pregnancy, and the well-being of surrogate mothers. There are fewer laws
regulating surrogacy in India, which contributes to the lower cost and
faster results.
Travis’ website, www.WorldofSurrogacy.com, provides basic information
about the process and expenses of surrogacy. She and her husband,
Colin, live in the D.C. area with their son Mark, born in 2008, and
twins Alec and Elle born in 2010. The children were born of the same
surrogate mother in a clinic in Anand, Gujarat, India.
Please see www.worldofsurrogacy.com

Friday, October 12, 2012

Please join in for a lively chat on Monday with the founder of World of Surrogacy on WPFW live on 89.3 Pacifica radio. If you reside in Maryland, Washington DC or Virginia you can tune in on 89.3, all others can join in online......................

Monday, October 8, 2012

Fashion designer Tom Ford became the
latest celebrity to use a surrogate mother to make a baby on Friday when
it was announced that he and his partner of 24 years, editor Richard Buckley, had become fathers of a boy named Alexander.
They joined a list that includes Giuliana Rancic, Elton John, Camille Grammer, Ricky Martin, Sarah Jessica Parker and Nicole Kidman. But there are tens of thousands of parents who are not rich or famous using surrogates.
A professional Washington D.C.-based facilitator, Crystal Travis, tells Flash that the baby-making technique has become more affordable in recent years, thanks to outsourcing.
“It’s a $2.3 billion industry in India,” said Travis. “It’s much more
expensive in the U.S., more than $100,000. In India, it’s about
$35,000.” Travis, who experienced the anguish on infertility herself,
started her World of Surrogacy consulting business in 2007, after she
and her husband had three kids in India using the same surrogate mother.
Gay men are big customers because it’s largely unregulated, as
opposed to adoption, which involves reams of red tape. “It’s much easier
than adopting and works out to be about the same cost,” Travis said.

Monday, October 1, 2012

Surrogacy in India at this time next year, will have changed completely. There many unscrupulous doctor's involved in the business of surrogacy, sadly, just reading positive blogs is not enough to protect you. The majority of intended parent's do not blog about surrogacy in India, for a host of reasons. Sadly, many wish to keep the veiled secrecy that they even used a surrogate in India, and for many, after so many negatives they have given up. With that said, there is hope that you can have a baby born via a surrogate in India, but buyer beware. Do not look for the least expensive doctor that you can find in India, because you will pay one way or the other.

Bad IVF doctors and how to protect yourself

While IVF technology has miraculously made successful pregnancy
possible for almost every couple, not all IVF Clinics are created equal.
Protect yourself from ineffective treatment and possible physical
damage by learning how to differentiate between a good IVF clinic and a
bad one.

There is no doubt that IVF technology represents one of
modern medicine's success stories. Using IVF , we can help couples who
could never have a baby with any other technique to start their own
family.
However, woe betide the patient who ends up in a bad IVF
clinic ! For example , one of the IVF clinics in New Delhi is owned by a
skin specialist. This doctor, who is not even a gynecologist , offers
IVF treatment ! Not only are your chances of getting pregnant in a bad
IVF clinic very low, you also run a major risk of losing a lot of time,
money and energy. Not only do you pour your money down the drain, you
also end up losing confidence in IVF technology, thus depriving yourself
of your best chance of having a baby . And when you do find out
afterwards that the IVF clinic you selected was a bad one, there is
little you can do about it ! Blaming yourself or cursing the doctor
afterwards does not help, which is why you need to be very careful when
deciding which fertility clinic in which to do your treatment ! Caveat
emptor - and this is why it's very important that you do your homework
carefully - you are making a major investment !
Some useful guidelines to help you find the best IVF doctor are here.
How
do you identify a bad IVF clinic ? It's important to be critical and
careful, and not to take everything the IVF clinic says for granted. A
common problem is that even bad clinics will quote high pregnancy rates
because these are published in the medical literature, rather than share
their own success rates.
Unfortunately,
many patients naively assume that all IVF clinics are equally good.
They often select a fertility clinic because it is close to them;
because they charge less; or because they know of someone who took
treatment there and got pregnant. However, remember that there is a
world of a difference between a good IVF clinic and a bad IVF clinic -
not all IVF clinics are equally good ! It can be far more cost-effective
to fly down to a good IVF clinic with a high pregnancy rate, even if
this does cost a little more, as your "cost per baby " is likely to be
much less, rather than to do IVF in a local fertility clinic with a low
pregnancy rate !
Some IVF clinics in India depend upon the
services of a part-time embryologist, who flies down only once or twice a
month to perform the IVF or ICSI
procedures. These fertility clinics batch all their patients together,
and then perform about 5-20 treatments over a period of 2 days. This can
be dangerous for you ! Not all patients grow eggs at the same rate !
Suppose yours grow too slowly ? Or too fast ? The doctor has no choice,
but to perform your egg collection on the pre-scheduled date, thus resulting in a major drop in your chances of conceiving. TopOther
IVF doctors are only "part-time" IVF doctors. They spend most of their
time delivering babies or doing hysterectomies ( which is often far more
profitable). They do IVF simply to provide an additional service. Such
an attitude often results in their providing a sub-optimal service
because they cannot devote the time and energy needed to provide high
pregnancy rates. Full-time IVF doctor who do nothing else have much
higher pregnancy rates, because their entire reputation and income
depends upon their IVF pregnancy rates !
Other IVF doctors enjoy
jetting around or travelling from place to place. They set up a "chain
of IVF clinics" all over the country to get more patients, and then
spend their energies running around from clinic to clinic. This often
means that they are not available to monitor your treatment. You may
find that you only see the "big-name" doctor once - for your first consultation. Afterwards, this doctor is never available for you !
Other
fertility clinics cut corners and compromise by using underhand methods
and dirty tricks. They "share" your eggs with other patients without
informing you, thus earning an additional income from their egg sharing
programs, which they advertise to attract infertile women who need donor eggs ! However, not only is this grossly unethical, it also means that your chances of getting pregnant are drastically reduced !
Many
bad IVF clinics do not offer the full range of services a good IVF
clinic does. Thus, they do not offer embryo freezing facilities, and
they "bad-mouth" embryo freezing technology, claiming that the pregnancy
rates with frozen embryos are poor ! Fertility Clinics which cannot
freeze embryos are technically inadequate; and will often "donate" your
spare embryos to other patients without your consent !
Others buy
second-hand incubators; or poor quality equipment. They try to save
pennies by not servicing their microscopes; using cheap IVF culture
medium ; or "recycling" disposables such as catheters and egg collection
needles, thus increasing your risk of acquiring an infection and
reducing your chances of getting pregnant. Many have very old, poor
quality ultrasound scanners, which make it hard for them to see the follicles or do an egg collection.
I
agree that it's very hard for the average infertile patient to judge
the technical competence of an IVF clinic. Ideally, your clinic should
be open and above-board ; and should be happy to show you around, and
share information with you during your treatment. TopSigns of a bad clinic include:

When they refuse to show you their equipment or facilities

When you do not get a chance to talk to the same IVF doctor

When they do not show you the ultrasound screen during your monitoring or tell you how many eggs you are growing

When there is a major discrepancy between the number of follicles you
grow on scanning and the number of eggs they collect from you

They do not show you your embryos under the microscope

They do not offer embryo freezing facilities

They do not give you a discharge summary at the end of your treatment

What
happens in many IVF clinics is very distressing. It pains me when I see
patients who have been through many IVF treatment cycles, but know
pathetically little about their treatment details, because the clinic
never provided them with this information.
Embroidering pregnancy
rates is an art some ART clinics are very good at. I know of some
doctors who deliberately give their patients repeated HCG injections
after embryo transfer,
( Inj Profassi, or Inj Pregnyl) and then measure the blood level of
beta HCG a few days later to prove to the patient that she conceived !
Since the beta HCG level is positive, the patient naively believes she
did get pregnant (when it become negative, the doctor explains that she
miscarried) , little realizing that the positive test result was just a
result of the HCG hormone administered to her in the injection !( If the
doctor gave her husband the same injection, he would have a positive
pregnancy test too ! ) Such a cruel trick not only gives the patient
false hope which is dashed to pieces, it also hooks her to the clinic
for life, since she "nearly" got pregnant in her previous cycle.
Even
"internationally reputed" clinics resort to some underhand practices -
and perhaps this is even more dangerous, because few patients dare to
question them , given their reputation. Thus, some push unproven
treatments such as immunotherapy for recurrent pregnancy losses,
offering their patients false hope after making them spend lots of
money. Since these treatments are still controversial and unproven, it
would only be fair to offer them as part of a controlled clinical trial,
at no charge to patients. However, these patients are often so
desperate, that they are happy to grasp at straws - especially when
these are cloaked in the garb of scientific gobbledygook.